This is my favorite game of all time(yup, I narrowed it to VS). I beat countless times, and can still play it from a fresh new save if I wanted to, 6 years after I bought it. It was challenging as hell, unlike a lot of SE games, and I loved it for that. The story is still my favorite out of everything SE ever made. This does indeed make me very excited to get my hands on FF12.

With the soon to be released Valkyrie Profile 2, it kinda brought my hopes up for a sequel, since neither games sold very well to warrant one to begin with(correct me if I'm wrong). But of course, VP is one game, and VS is another, and I doubt that it will ever happen.

Logged

--Oh, please. Warping the minds of men and shepherding the masses has always been your Church's domain. You lure sheep with empty miracles and a dead God. ...Or perhaps you, too, are a sheep, Samantha. A poor little lamb, bleating for your faith as though it were milk of the poppy. Yet mark your savior well, for he is one of the demons you so fear, Samantha--

If I recall correctly, Valkyrie Profile did fairly well in Japan. Doubt it was a million seller, but it was probably strong enough to warrant a sequel.

VS might be the same way, but honestly even if SE and Matsumo both wanted to do one, there was the whole deal with developing FFTA then FFXII; a bit too busy for the last 3 or 4 years to go make a new VS. Plus it'd be smarter after that, they can then hook in all the people who loved FFXII into buying VS2 along with the original fans.

Oh, and I didn't find it TOO hard - it certainly has more of a bite than the vast majority of modern RPGs, but... whether it's because of forcing myself through games like XSII, playing the MegaTen titles, or just plain getting more experinced, I found it much, much easier when I played through it and beat it than when I got half way through back when it came out.

Valkyrie Profile sold only 73,000 copies abroad, but a more than solid 636,000 copies in Japan. Vagrant Story sold about 400,000 copies less than Valkyrie Profile in Japan. Yasumi Matsuno himself likened Vagrant Story to an indepedent movie at one point. Since Square Enix has not shown a lot of interest in those kind of creative experiments, I dare to doubt they would be interested in spending money on a Vagrant Story sequel (especially since they have not even touched far more successful IPs, such as Parasite Eve or Chrono for six years).

As for Matsuno himself, the development of Final Fantasy XII seems to have taken quite a toll on him. I never thought a company like Square Enix would come forward, publically announce that one of its highest profile producer was ill and therefore would be replaced by another (Akitoshi Kawazu). Apart from this personal issue, Final Fantasy XII ended up being delayed for more than 1.5 years which must have driven up development costs significantly. What effect these troubles have on Matsuno's career, who knows, but I wouldn't want to have been in his stead. As for his next project, I would not be surprised, if Matsuno's fourth production team will or has already moved on to work on a new Final Fantasy Tactics or Ogre Battle installment.